Who will win the 2020 US Presidential Election?

[the_engineer 1,415]

 

 

 

An alternative viewpoint. We'll see if this has any legs. If the ballots have the watermark & Blockchain then trump should accept defeat if not we're looking at election fraud. Let the experts and independent officials, FBI etc get in there and check. Trump or democrats one of them has to pay if they're wrong.

 

 

 

[Joey Russ 7,220]

15 minutes ago, The Quim Reaper said:

Which is a very, very sorry indictment of the electorate indeed in my view, this vast amount of people either accepting or actively wanting white supremacy, poisonous and oppressive conservatism and deeply unpleasant serial liars to paint a picture for them. The first time, not so much, but for him to get 6m more votes this time, with his proven record, is horrifying.

 

Everywhere’s going to be divided, of course it is, but as it’s been said before, even though Biden has won, the result is not a good sort of eye-opener.

Then how do you explain Trump’s increase with voters of colors? Are they too racist and want white supremacy to happen? 
I think the reason why Trump got a lot more votes than last time is frankly a very complex one. Yes, there’s definitely your share of voters who are racist and don’t care about people of color, but that is not the full picture. The reality is Joe Biden ran on not being Donald Trump. That isn’t really an inspiring message for people, and especially those folk of color who supported Trump who do know Joe Biden’s past record, they think that Joe Biden is the greater evil since he has a record of passing things that harmed those communities for years. Particularly for the Latino communities, Trump did a much better job doing some outreach with the community than Biden. That’s a big reason why that state went decisively to Trump. 
I think most people believe that Biden would’ve been defeated handily had the pandemic not occurred. When you’re not running on anything and said behind the scenes nothing would fundamentally change, that isn’t going to inspire people to vote for you. The democrats actually need to run on policy if they want to win in the future, and that’s a reality that frankly they don’t want to look in the mirror about. 

[CoffinLodger 1,248]

35 minutes ago, Joey Russ said:

Pennsylvania has been called by one organization, I imagine others will follow soon: 

 

That's it then. Joe Biden is now officially President elect Biden.  How much pressure will top Republicans put on Trump to concede I wonder...

[Charlotte's Controller 195]

Now that's over let's have a game of cards and a drink, Top Trumps anyone?

[Toast 16,137]

1 hour ago, Joey Russ said:

Pennsylvania has been called by one organization, I imagine others will follow soon: 

 

 

See, this is what I'm talking about. 

How can they say a candidate has won in a state until their majority is greater than the number of votes that remain to be counted?

[MrWonderful 481]

4 minutes ago, Toast said:

 

See, this is what I'm talking about. 

How can they say a candidate has won in a state until their majority is greater than the number of votes that remain to be counted?

Well, to be fair, no major news organization (in the U.S., anyway) has called PA yet.  But it's been blatantly obvious since the early AM hours of Wednesday where it was headed in PA.  The outstanding vote was/is practically all the early mail-in vote, which everyone knew would skew heavily Democratic.  And as the results kept coming in, there was and has been demonstrated data that shows Biden getting about 80-85% in the Democratic stronghold counties like Philadelphia, and he's even getting a sizable majority in the rural Republican counties because, well, the vast majority of Republican voters voted on Election Day.  The votes still left to be counted are going to skew heavily Democratic, and that's just a fact.  It looks like Biden will end up winning the state by about 80-100K, well outside the margin where a recount could happen.  

[Toast 16,137]

12 minutes ago, MrWonderful said:

Well, to be fair, no major news organization (in the U.S., anyway) has called PA yet.  But it's been blatantly obvious since the early AM hours of Wednesday where it was headed in PA.  The outstanding vote was/is practically all the early mail-in vote, which everyone knew would skew heavily Democratic.  And as the results kept coming in, there was and has been demonstrated data that shows Biden getting about 80-85% in the Democratic stronghold counties like Philadelphia, and he's even getting a sizable majority in the rural Republican counties because, well, the vast majority of Republican voters voted on Election Day.  The votes still left to be counted are going to skew heavily Democratic, and that's just a fact.  It looks like Biden will end up winning the state by about 80-100K, well outside the margin where a recount could happen.  

 

Yes, I understand all that, but it's still an assumption, isn't it?

"The votes still left to be counted are going to skew heavily Democratic, and that's just a fact." - No, it isn't a fact.  It's an assumption.

 

The Guardian in the UK has officially counted Arizona as a Biden win.  I believe they are following the lead of AP.

 

[MrWonderful 481]

6 minutes ago, Toast said:

 

Yes, I understand all that, but it's still an assumption, isn't it?

"The votes still left to be counted are going to skew heavily Democratic, and that's just a fact." - No, it isn't a fact.  It's an assumption.

 

The Guardian in the UK has officially counted Arizona as a Biden win.  I believe they are following the lead of AP.

 

I guess it's semantics.  Is there a batch within a county that could come in of something like 100 votes where Trump got, say, 55 of them?  Sure.  But I'm just speaking in general terms, large batches of this vote are going to skew heavily Democratic, even in Republican counties.  Republicans in PA and in most places simply did not vote by mail with any kind of regularity.  A notable exception to this was in Arizona, where in Maricopa County (Phoenix area) it is not uncommon to see Republicans voting by mail with 1 or 2 days left before Election Day, which is why you've seen the lead in AZ dwindle a bit for the last couple of days.  

[TQR 14,388]

1 hour ago, Joey Russ said:

Then how do you explain Trump’s increase with voters of colors? Are they too racist and want white supremacy to happen? 
I think the reason why Trump got a lot more votes than last time is frankly a very complex one. Yes, there’s definitely your share of voters who are racist and don’t care about people of color, but that is not the full picture. The reality is Joe Biden ran on not being Donald Trump. That isn’t really an inspiring message for people, and especially those folk of color who supported Trump who do know Joe Biden’s past record, they think that Joe Biden is the greater evil since he has a record of passing things that harmed those communities for years. Particularly for the Latino communities, Trump did a much better job doing some outreach with the community than Biden. That’s a big reason why that state went decisively to Trump. 
I think most people believe that Biden would’ve been defeated handily had the pandemic not occurred. When you’re not running on anything and said behind the scenes nothing would fundamentally change, that isn’t going to inspire people to vote for you. The democrats actually need to run on policy if they want to win in the future, and that’s a reality that frankly they don’t want to look in the mirror about. 

I’m not disagreeing with you but I didn’t say it was all race-related, that’s just one prong of the fork of unpleasantness that Trump has been stabbing away at society with. And in any case, only 8% of black men and 3% of black women voted for Trump, so he’s not exactly winning then over is he?

 

 

News as an aside, they’ll be recounting in Georgia.

[Joey Russ 7,220]

Another Maricopa batch came in, and it’s not the margins Trump needs to catch up in Arizona: 

 

[RoverAndOut 4,746]

1 hour ago, Toast said:

 

Yes, I understand all that, but it's still an assumption, isn't it?

"The votes still left to be counted are going to skew heavily Democratic, and that's just a fact." - No, it isn't a fact.  It's an assumption.

 

The Guardian in the UK has officially counted Arizona as a Biden win.  I believe they are following the lead of AP.

 

 

Didn't get the chance to reply earlier, but there's two parts to your answer. First is the 24 hour news culture and the expectation of quick results - news networks are under pressure to find the result on election night and they don't want to be last to the news. It's not always decided on election night: the famous one is Bush/Gore in 2000 which wasn't decided for weeks due to Florida. In 2004, the first election I was properly engaged for, I remember checking back in throughout the day after the election for the result in Ohio, which would decide who would reach 270 (spoiler: Bush did and was re-elected). In 2016, Clinton was behind by tiny margins in multiple states, but saw the direction of travel and conceded rather than force recounts that were unlikely to be successful. Also tied into this is the peculiarities of this year's election: with coronavirus a lot more mail-in votes were cast. Some states allow these to be counted when they come in or at least before election day, which is why Biden started with a lead in Ohio which then disappeared. Pennsylvania in particular has a law which says they can't be opened until election day, so with at least 1 million votes by mail, that was always going to take time to open, verify and count. That's why they're taking so long. Trump himself is part of the reason for the rush to declare the winner because he said that the result MUST be known on the night, basically delegitimising all the mail ballots, which would likely break for Biden. States have generally been trying to count as fast as possible to declare a winner.

 

The second part, which is the guesswork part of the question is a fair point, this is all a bit of guesswork, that's why they're called 'projections' not 'results'. Mistakes do happen, but I don't think a state has been incorrectly called since Florida in 2000 was called for Gore, retracted, called for Bush, retracted and eventually awarded to Bush. Since then, networks have been a lot more careful about declaring states. All eyes on Arizona this time, but so far only Fox have called it among the major networks anyway. Why not just wait 'til they've finished counting? Because it takes ages! And I'm not talking a week, I'm talking a month. Likening states to constituencies is tricky because even the smallest states are around 5 times the population of a UK constituency and often rural. Results are counted locally (by counties, often still larger than a UK constituency) and then there's checks done to ratify those results, then there's a state meeting to sign off on all the final results and then there's the Electoral College, where the states cast their votes for President. It's a long process which is dead time. I get that you're not necessarily suggesting waiting until all the steps have been cleared to declare the states but the reason they feel confident in declaring results is where the outstanding ballots are. They're mainly counting mail-in ballots, which skew Democratic anyway in almost every state, because Dems trust mail-in ballots, Republicans prefer to vote on the day (in most states). As more and more mail-in votes are being counted, the figures aren't changing: Biden's winning around 60-80% of the mail-in ballots, sometimes even in Republican-leaning areas, depending on the state and county. Add to that the fact there's more outstanding ballots in the major cities of these states (where more people live, and which tend to lean Democratic - in the same way Labour are bigger in the inner cities and Conservatives do better in the shires over here), then all the evidence says that these outstanding ballots (in most cases) are going to fall much higher for Biden than for Trump (Biden's winning Philadelphia for instance by 80 points to 20 among all votes counted). If Biden's already in front, there's no clear path for Trump to pull back ahead. It's worth noting no network has called any of the 4 remaining battleground states, but I expect Pennsylvania to be called at some point today/tonight - I think I saw on 538 (big US polling site) that ABC News are waiting for 99.5% of the votes in Pennsylvania to be counted before declaring Biden the winner (unless something changes of course). 

 

Sorry for writing loads, but I hope it helps a bit to explain the rationale.

[RoverAndOut 4,746]

 

For those, like me, wondering what a conservative, one-third Trump-appointed Supreme Court might do when these cases get there, this is the main non-partisan observer of the Court's activities.

[Lard Bazaar 3,799]

I bet Joe Biden don’t get no letter like one of these

 

 

[Toast 16,137]

11 minutes ago, Lard Bazaar said:

I bet Joe Biden don’t get no letter like one of these

 

 

 

I like where it says the letter will be in crayon.

[runebomme 377]

He would be lucky to get any letter from Trump

 

abusive email maybe

[Joey Russ 7,220]

 

 

[RoverAndOut 4,746]

 

[Genfærd 452]

6 hours ago, runebomme said:

He would be lucky to get any letter from Trump

 

abusive email maybe

 

Or angry tweets.

[Charlotte's Controller 195]

So I expect that once this is over (and it seems to be) Mr Trump will go back to his many successful businesses. I believe there will be a fair bit of crystallisation and reorganisation as the dust settles. Perhaps he could create a new media empire along the likes of Fox News or the Comedy Channel to look after his tremendous image rights, he might even get those valued to add to his investment portfolio.

[Joey Russ 7,220]

So, I am posting an old video of Barack Obama campaigning in Ohio in 2012. As you can see, he  clearly has an energized base. His message was actually inspiring to many Americans (he didn’t fulfill his promises mind you, but that’s a discussion for another day). While you watch this speech from Obama, think of how Hillary Clinton ran her campaign in 2016 and how Joe Biden ran his campaign in 2020. Think about the key differences between Obama then and Hillary and Biden when they ran their campaign. I think most people will agree that this strategy from Obama in 2012 was much better than the Clinton strategy of 2016 and the Biden strategy of 2020.

 

[CaptainChorizo 1,977]

It's surreal how much both parties political conventions in 2012 and before were largely just infomercials trying to sell their candidate as Aspirational figures with policies that will better the country.  The last 2 campaigns both the RNC and DNC Conventions were largely just "if that other side wins America will become a Dystopian Hellscape"

[TQR 14,388]

7 hours ago, Charlotte's Controller said:

So I expect that once this is over (and it seems to be) Mr Trump will go back to his many successful businesses. I believe there will be a fair bit of crystallisation and reorganisation as the dust settles. Perhaps he could create a new media empire along the likes of Fox News or the Comedy Channel to look after his tremendous image rights, he might even get those valued to add to his investment portfolio.

Successful businesses? Hahahahahaha.

 

The man is bankrupt, and not just in a moral sense.

[time 8,599]

23 minutes ago, The Quim Reaper said:

Successful businesses? Hahahahahaha.

 

The man is bankrupt, and not just in a moral sense.

Donald J. Trump is the main business of Donald J. Trump. Forbes has him worth $2,5 billion, so that's one successful business.

[TQR 14,388]

20 minutes ago, time said:

Donald J. Trump is the main business of Donald J. Trump. Forbes has him worth $2,5 billion, so that's one successful business.

A successful business isn’t one that consistently loses money.

[time 8,599]

4 minutes ago, The Quim Reaper said:

A successful business isn’t one that consistently loses money.

Agreed - he's had far more unsuccessful businesses than successful, but my point was that the only business Trump is really interested in making a success of, is Trump.